


right before your eyes

by zeldalookslonely



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 02:57:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21029132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldalookslonely/pseuds/zeldalookslonely
Summary: Charles is almost never subtle, but this is a whole new level of obviousness.  Jake just doesn’t know what emotion he’s obviously displaying.





	right before your eyes

Jake can feel Charles’s eyes on him, even from across the room as Charles chats with Captain Holt and Amy. Brown eyes blazing over Jake’s face, never shying away or growing less intense. Charles is almost never subtle, but this is a whole new level of obviousness. Jake just doesn’t know what emotion he’s obviously displaying. Anger? Fear? Maybe he just has news to share. Maybe he met someone. Jake closes his eyes, fingers tapping his desk in anxious motion; tries to remember: there was talk of some blonde he met at the fancy grocery store. Probably someone who understands what mouthfeel means on a deep, intellectual level. Whatever. Whatever. He’ll just ask. Jake texts: _sup buddy_ and watches Charles check his phone, frown, and fail to reply. 

Not cool.

This continues all day: Charles ignores Jake, apart from the weird intense staring. By the time their shift is over, Jake is more than a little keyed up.

“Boyle, buddy!” Jake says, too abrupt, too loud, “how about the mouthfeel on those chips earlier? Sub-par, huh? Like, who even makes those things?”

“Let’s go by your place,” Charles says, speaking to, and looking away from, Jake for the first time.

“Uhh, sure. Walk?”

Charles nods. The weather is gorgeous and it should be pleasant, but Charles is so tense he’s practically vibrating: clenched fists, pointed frown, rigid gait. By the time they reach Jake’s door, Jake is so worried he grabs Charles’s hand; he’s already soothing stiff fingers open when he realizes he might be crossing a line.

Charles makes a noise from deep in his chest. He yanks Jake through the door. Presses him against the wall in his tiny apartment. Pins his wrists above his head. _Oh my god._

“Charles,” Jake says gently, “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

“You are so reckless,” Charles hisses.

“What.”

“No prep, Jake! You didn’t even have to be there! You could have -- a bullet whizzed by, three inches from your head!”

“You mean… this morning? That was nothing.” Domestic violence call. They’d gotten there shortly after Amy and Rosa and Jake decided to stay as backup. Went bad, but nothing unusual. Amy and Rosa had had it in hand the entire time.

“It wasn’t _nothing_! It was--” Charles goes limp, strings cut, slumps against Jake. He’s shaking.

“Okay. Okay,” Jake says, “you need to lie down.” He tugs Charles to his bedroom, tucks him under his comforter-of-questionable-cleanliness. He feel helpless against this, uncomprehending but warm at the sight of Charles in his bed. Maybe a little defensive. Charles is a cop too, why doesn’t he understand? “You know the job isn’t always safe.”

Charles grips his forearm. “I told you to leave; Rosa and Amy told us to leave. Protocol was for us to leave. You shouldn’t have been there. If you’d have been--,” he chokes, continues, “If you’d have been killed, it would have been for nothing, Jake. Nothing! Unnecessary. Wrong place, wrong time. It would have been for _nothing_.”

Jake breathes out slow. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he is, he really is. He slips under the covers, rubs up and down Charles’s arm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

But it isn’t helping, Charles is only growing more agitated, tense, squirming. “Jake,” he says.

“Shh, it’s okay. How can I help? I’m sorry.”

Charles gasps. “Can I,” he gestures to his own body, under the comforter.

“Yeah, anything,” Jake says, hoarse “whatever you want, anything.”

“Are you sure? I could, I could leave.”

“Don’t leave,” Jake says, fiercely. “Stay with me.”

“Fuck,” Charles says, and it shouldn’t surprise Jake; it’d been telegraphed clearly, permission given, but he still jumps when Charles’s hand snakes down his own body, unbuttons his pants under the covers, strokes his own cock. His head lolls back. “Fuck,” he says again, panting already, “Should I stop?”

“Don’t stop,” says Jake, bites back a _please_. “Anything.”

He doesn’t stop; Jake can’t look away, watches Charles’s hand move, shift under the covers, watches Charles’s face; his eyes flit back and forth; he listens to gasping breath and heavy, slick sliding; he’s never been so hard in his life; he wants to touch, holds back; unsure if it’d be welcome. 

“Jake,” gasps Charles, and he sounds so desperate, so desperate, “I won’t, you don’t have to worry but, can I, can I?”

“Yes,” Jake says, “yeah, yes,” as if he could possibly say no, could possibly refuse any request while Charles’s face is screwed up tight, body rigid, chasing, chasing, chasing release.

Charles winds one hand (_the hand not currently touching his cock_, thinks Jake in awe) up Jake’s chest, along his neck, into his hair, gripping his curls tight. He presses their foreheads together, eyes closed, dark lashes fanning out, red high in his cheeks. Suddenly, he shifts and tugs at Jake’s hair a little; it’s clearly inadvertent, but Jake makes a noise that can only be described as mortifying. Charles keens, high-pitched, shoves his face impossibly closer to Jake’s as he comes; Charles is dripping with sweat and breathing out over Jake’s lips, and maybe, maybe, maybe Charles will kiss him now, they’re so close, less than a breath away, but:

But when Charles opens his eyes, he doesn’t look sated, doesn’t look satisfied. Is clearly horrified. Scrambles back, away from Jake like he’s poison. Whisks himself away, barely taking a second to fix his pants, calling “sorry” behind him. Like Jake is some stranger he bumped into, spilled coffee on.

“Charles,” Jake says, but he’s long gone. Jake is alone.

…

Jake is so sure this is some kind of big misunderstanding, it takes him days to realize Charles is avoiding him. And Charles is tops at avoidance, like grade-A level avoidance, because Jake just… doesn’t see him anymore. They work in the same precinct! They were partners a week ago!

Amy claps him on the shoulder when he complains. 

“He probably talked to the Captain about rearranging shifts. You should just talk to him,” she says. She doesn’t say ‘buck up’ outright, which Jake appreciates, but it’s very clear from her expression.

It’s the same kind of lousy advice he’d give if he didn’t know the whole story, but he can’t tell the whole story, can he? It’s not just his story to spill.

Maybe Amy is getting some of that from his face, because her expression softens. “Do you want to come with Kylie and me to bar trivia tonight?”

“Sure,” he lies, because he honestly doesn’t know if he can handle another night alone, brooding.

…

Nothing changes until Jake literally runs into Charles in the men’s room. They collide and stagger apart, and Jake is sure Charles is about to bolt since he’s closest to the door, but Charles seems frozen to the spot, wide-eyed. It feels like his only chance to say something. He thinks: _I know what you look like when you come_. He thinks: _I jerked off thinking about your hands last night_. He thinks: _I don’t know what to do with these feelings._

He says: “We’re supposed to be best friends!” Which wasn’t what he meant to say at all and also somehow doesn’t really sound much less pathetic than his first thoughts. “Ugh! Whatever!”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says.

Jake stalks closer. He would totally feel like some kind of badass lion or panther if the stakes weren’t so high right now. “You said, as you left.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says again, and Jake’s head is about to explode.

“Stop saying that! You’d bail on our entire best-friendship because you regret what happened between us? All you had to do was say so! Like I would try to force something on you, romantic-stylez? I would never!” Jake feels himself choking up, shifts his gaze to the stupid stained ceiling tiles. “I get it, you know. Adrenaline, right? I get that it didn’t really have anything to do with me.”

“Jake,” Charles says, taking a few steps closer, voice soft, shaky, “it had everything to do with you. That’s not… it’s all you. Obviously. Obviously.”

“How is it obvious? Is that what I was supposed to read into your disappearing act?”

“What I did… it went beyond crossing a line. I had no control over myself. Jakey, I never should have--”

“We haven’t kissed yet,” Jake says stupidly.

“Why would you ever want to, after--”

“Because I liked it! And you weren’t out of control, you _asked_ and I said yes. Okay? And if you didn’t like it, fine. That’s fine. But you just… disappeared on me. I thought--”

“I don’t want to kiss you here,” Charles blurts out, then closes his eyes, face going red.

Jake feels a spark catch in his chest, flow through his veins like fire. Hope. “So you do…want?”

“I want. I want. I’m. I’m so sorry. I did everything wrong. I kept picturing you saying I was crazy, I took advantage, we’re not friends anymore. I could hear you saying it in my head, over and over. I just… ran away. I shouldn’t have.”

“I missed you,” Jake says.

“I want to kiss you. Can I kiss you tonight?”

“I want to kiss you too. Tonight. Tonight.”

“Tonight.”

…

They’re already old pros at kissing like, two minutes after entering Jake’s apartment. Fo realz. Kissing experts. Natural ones.

“We’re kissing experts,” Jake says.

“I want to take you out,” Charles says. “A date. I want to take you out on a date. I want to apologize a thousand more times. Then I want to take you home and have a second try at our first time.”

“Is that a thing?” Jake asks, and hopefully it sounds cool enough to cover his racing heartbeat.

“It’s a thing. I can’t believe how selfish I was. I didn’t think you’d-- I never thought!”

“I get it, it’s okay.”

”It’s not! I’m not a selfish lover, Jakey. I promise. I can give you references!”

“I don’t want references,” Jake says, probably too forcefully because Charles is smirking.

“I want to cover you in pate and lick you clean,” he says, _growls_.

“Fuck,” Jake says, then, “wait, which one is pate?”

“Liver paste,” says Charles, which is actually somehow worse than Jake was thinking and also very endearing.

“Absolutely not.”

“Whipped cream?”

“I’ll think about it,” he says, presses their lips together, a promise. A future.

**Author's Note:**

> practicing jake's pov  
(thanks! i hate it)


End file.
